Balota
"A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." 2nd Amendment to the Constitution of the United States
Practice does NOT make perfect. Practice makes permanent. Only perfect practice makes perfect.

Just today I had a member call me and ask how much longer the ISRA was going to pester him to call his legislators about gun control bills.

My answer was, Until we win.

Ladies and gentlemen, I need to speak to you very plainly about what we are facing in Springfield. Whats going in the Capitol is not some sort of new-age encounter group where gun owners and gun grabbers are searching weepy-eyed for an elusive piece of common ground.

No, what we are engaged in is a nothing less than a good old fashioned street fight. This is the kind of fight where - in the end - one guy goes home while the other guy gets carted away in a box. If you and your fellow gun owners do not stand up for what you believe in, your gun rights will be carted away and dumped on the scrap heap of liberties sacrificed in the name of political and social progress.

Many of you may believe that we will win this battle because the facts are on our side. Indeed, if this was a battle over the facts about private firearm ownership, our freedom would be assured.

Unfortunately, the battle for gun rights is not about facts  it is about out and out hatred. The followers of the gun control movement hate people who own guns, plain and simple. There is no way around it  if you own guns, you are the object of the gun controllers hatred. As we have witnessed the past few months, the hatred is so deep that these people will stop at nothing to eradicate your freedoms.

Why do gun controllers hate us so much? The answer is actually very simple. The armed citizen is symbolic of freedom and self determination. As our nations history has shown, that freedom bestows prosperity and well being. As long as a person is armed, they are free  unrestrained by social convention, unburdened by the priorities of others, unshackled by the intrusion of government.

On the other hand, gun controllers see self-reliance as being an obstacle to social progress. They view freedom as a selfish pursuit that reaps only inequality and despair. The gun controllers and their ilk yearn for a society where the government enforces equity among all citizens at the expense of liberty.

So, ladies and gentlemen, you see that the armed citizen just doesnt fit into the gun-controllers recipe for social and political progress. The gun controllers demand that the underlying philosophy of personal liberty and self reliance be eradicated. Thus, guns and those who own them must be purged from society if society is to progress.

Our refusal to submit to their ideal of a gun-free America is why they hate us. And this hatred is nothing new. The following is a quote from an editorial appearing in the February 2, 1997 edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer. In the editorial, author Jack Cobbs depicts the hatred gun controllers feel towards gun owners:

I may have to live in a world with NRA members, but I dont want them on the school board, or the vestry of my church, or as leaders of my childrens Scout troops, any more than I want KKK members or people who think its OK for terrorists to bomb airplanes.

Cobbs goes on to say:

Like most of us, they (NRA members) cherish their positions as responsible citizens, and if it becomes clear that the price they must pay to belong to the NRA is to become social pariahs, most will opt for responsibility.

Cobbs editorial plainly shows what we are up against. Dont fool yourself, Cobbs is not an extremist  he is a moderate among those who support gun control. These people are not interested in any sort of national dialog or balancing the rights of gun owners with public safety, or any of the other post-Newtown claptrap weve seen in the press. The only thing the gun controllers want is to see you hand over your guns  all your guns  to the local police and then just go away.

This is why we must continue to fight in Springfield. This is why you need to keep calling your representatives and senators. They need to be reminded day in and day out that the right to keep and bear arms is not negotiable. They need to be reminded that incremental diminishment of our rights is not acceptable.

The gun controllers are patient. Their plan is to rely on gun owner complacency  to wait us out. The gun controllers expect you to stop making calls to your representatives and senators. They expect you to get distracted by other pursuits while they remain focused on taking your guns away from you.

Gun owner complacency is responsible for people like Obama and Quinn being elected. The more complacent gun owners become, the worse the political landscape becomes. The more gun owners let others make decisions for them, the more oppressive the outcomes of those decisions become.

Remember  preservation and protection of the right to keep and bear arms is a moral imperative. With a diminished Second Amendment, this country will become unrecognizable to those who cherish freedom and self determination.
Richard Pearson
ISRA Executive Director

__________________An Armed man is a Citizen,
An Unarmed man is a Subject. -- Unknown

PoliceOne.com publishes the results of their poll of 15,000 law enforcement officers regarding their attitudes on gun control.

Conclusion from the article...

Quite clearly, the majority of officers polled oppose the theories brought forth by gun-control advocates who claim that proposed restrictions on weapon capabilities and production would reduce crime.

In fact, many officers responding to this survey seem to feel that those controls will negatively affect their ability to fight violent criminals.

Contrary to what the mainstream media and certain politicians would have us believe, police overwhelmingly favor an armed citizenry, would like to see more guns in the hands of responsible people, and are skeptical of any greater restrictions placed on gun purchase, ownership, or accessibility.

The officers patrolling America’s streets have a deeply-vested interest — and perhaps the most relevant interest — in making sure that decisions related to controlling, monitoring, restricting, as well as supporting and/or prohibiting an armed populace are wise and effective. With this survey, their voice has been heard.

Gun control law which is passed for emotional reasons will encourage more of the same irrational thinking that created those laws. It will eventually infest everything, including the police and prosecutors and courts.

__________________

C.S.S.A.; N.F.A.; N.R.A. Life Member
Make the world a better place; have your liberal spayed or neutered.

This week's Quick Quip is the first of three installments dedicated to who the gun controllers are, and how to deal with them. The series is built on the premise that the world is made up of two types of people - those who take a traditional view of the Second Amendment, and then there is everyone else. Either someone is fully on our side, or they are not. In the battle to restore our rights, fence-sitters count for nothing.

For the purpose of this series, those who are not on our side are broken down into three groups: low-information types; true believers; and political hacks. This week's installment will deal with low-information types.

When it comes to gun rights, "low information types" are probably the biggest impediment to the restoration of the right to keep and bear arms. Almost by definition, low-information types really won't take the time or effort to learn about an issue. Rather, they are impacted most by whichever voice screams the loudest. Whatever they know about the world around them is gleaned from headlines, sound bytes heard on the radio, or "something" they may have heard "somewhere."

The low-information types are not stupid, they are just lazy and easily distracted. The problem with low-information types is that the anti-gun media targets them specifically with sensationalism and easy to remember catch phrases. "Universal background check," or "deadly assault weapon," or "high capacity magazine" are all examples of meaningless phrases easily absorbed by low-information types. By design, the media offers low-information types a simple means of forming an opinion on a complex issue. Yet, the formation of that opinion is not based on reality and not backed by hard facts.

It's a safe bet that most readers have encountered these low-information types. He's the annoying brother-in-law who spews his baseless opinions around the holiday dinner table while stuffing crescent rolls in his mouth two at a time. She's the office know-it-all who believes that the validity of her opinions is directly proportional to how loud she voices them. Low-information types are an aggravating, yet inescapable component of the gun-rights debate.

The most effective way to deal with low-information types is to avoid arguments with them in the first place. They won't listen to reason. They cannot absorb the facts. Arguments only entrench their antigun beliefs. Debates just become exercises in futility.

None of this is to say that low-information types cannot be swayed - many can. Low-information types often respond well to strong stimuli, and there are no stronger stimuli than the noise, smells, and sense of exhilaration of going out to the range for an afternoon of shooting.

So, rather than arguing with your gluttonous brother-in-law about clips versus magazines, take him to the range and let him pop rounds off from everything in your arsenal. Then, on the way home, stop off and buy him a hot, greasy burger, an order of cheesy fries, and a chocolate shake. Let him savor the moment. Let him beam over his marksmanship accomplishments. Chances are, a couple of hours at the range will at least fade the anti-gun notions planted in his head by the gun grabbers.

Next week: The True Believers

__________________An Armed man is a Citizen,
An Unarmed man is a Subject. -- Unknown